December 14, 2009

***Bumped by Rusty: You really need to read all the way to the end to get why this is so important. The pictures do, in fact, reveal a media silent on CAIR's coordinated message about Rifqa Bary. Especially an image of a CAIR computer with a document titled "DO NOT RELEASE TO PUBLIC" and "FATHIMA RIFQA BARY TALKING POINTS".
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Since early August we have been following the ongoing saga concerning Rifqa Bary, the Ohio Muslim-turned-Christian convert teenager who fled her home to Florida in fear of her life after her family discovered her conversion. Last Friday we reported a motion filed by the Bary's CAIR attorney with the Ohio court considering Rifqa's case demanding a ban and seizure of all Christmas cards sent to her from outside parties. We also broke the story of how CAIR officials were allowed to be present as "neutral observers" when the Bary family was interviewed by Florida investigators.

Early on in this case we reported that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) had convened a strategy session in Rifqa's hometown of Ohio where they formulated their media strategy in response to the negative press the parents were receiving:

But a source who was inside a secret strategy meeting conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) earlier this week has conveyed the strategy that the media's favorite Islamist group has devised to respond to the ongoing public relations crisis. According to my source who attended the strategy session, CAIR officials handed out copies of this Orlando Sentinel article and want supporters to push the meme that Christians have brainwashed and abducted this gullible teenage girl. They have also instructed supporters to circulate rumors that Rifqa had been carousing with infidel boys and engaged in acts of immorality. This CAIR strategy takes the focus off the near-universal Islamic legal precepts and Quranic injunctions that demand death for apostates and impugns the character of the innocent girl at the center of this controversy who appears to be in genuine fear for her life if she is returned to her parents.

That media narrative of Rifqa being brainwashed and abducted by a Christian cult was one that was carried by many media outlets, most notably Meredith "Hijab" Heagney of the Columbus Dispatch, Michael Kruse of the St. Petersburg Times, among others. In all their reporting, however, they carefully left the connections of the terror-tied CAIR out of their stories.

But from my source inside CAIR comes new information indicating media complicity with respect to concealing CAIR's backstage management of the case on behalf of Rifqa's allegedly abusive parents. Most of the stories by these media hacks featured pictures of the Bary family, such as this photo accompanying an article by the St. Pete Times' Michael Kruse:

What is important about this photograph is not so much what you see as what you don't see. As the late Paul Harvey said, and now for the rest of the story...

What CAIR's media allies neglected to mention was that these interviews with the lapdog media were being conducted in the office of CAIR-Columbus executive director Babak Darvish as seen in the following photographs taken in various media interviews.

For example, the following photograph shows the Barys being interviewed by a local TV station:

But this next picture shows the same scene panning just a little to the left:

At the very far left you can see Darvish sitting at his desk supervising the interview. And in this next photo you can see the whole scene inside Darvish's office (this one taken at some other time as the Bary's clothes have changed, but the picture above them in Darvish's office, as in the other photos, is still the same):

Here is Darvish sitting at his desk in all his Islamist glory:

And in this last photograph you see the local reporters doing their job. But if you enlarge the photo you can see the document on Darvish's computer - a memo bearing the header "DO NOT RELEASE TO PUBLIC" and "FATHIMA RIFQA BARY TALKING POINTS".

The reason this is particularly important is that if CAIR's media allies, such as Meredith "Hijab" Heagney and Michael Kruse, had let on to the terror-tied CAIR's covert backstage handling of the matter and their parroting of CAIR's talking points would have severely damaged the Bary's claims. Did Heagney, Kruse or any other member of the lapdog media report that their interviews were being conducted with the Bary family in the CAIR executive director's office? Not a word. Nor should it be any surprise that the media were merely parroting CAIR's false attacks on Rifqa.

We will have more on this media complicity in the Rifqa Bary case later this week. Who knows? Maybe we might have even obtained a copy of that "DO NOT RELEASE TO PUBLIC" set of talking points? If the public ever has the opportunity to review the stories by Heagney, Kruse, et al and compares it to the CAIR talking points, much will be revealed. But these pictures show what CAIR's media allies intentionally neglected to tell their readers/viewers. And as we'll see, there is much that they should be ashamed of in their reporting in the Rifqa Bary case.